Saturday, April 19, 2008

New Jeans for Second Life™

I've had Good Jeans in Second Life for some time, but lately people have been asking if they could have them without the heavy embroidery on the back pockets.

Since I made some for myself like that (I didn't care for the embroidery with the Hawaiian shirts) I thought I'd go ahead and make them for everyone. After all, Hawaiian shirt season is coming up!

So I made a batch, in the same colors as the Good Jeans, called Plain Pocket Jeans.

While I was at it, I changed the Permissions on the Good Jeans to Modify/Copy/No Transfer, and put together Fat Packs with seven pairs of jeans in them for the price of five. The Fat Packs are the Blue, Black, or Light Blue jeans in all the thread colors, or seven different colors of jeans all with the Gold or White thread.

As always, the Jeans have no seams except where seams would be on real jeans, so you'll look as good from the side as you do from the front or back. Each pair of Jeans has both Pants and Underpants with the Jeans texture on it, so you can wear them tucked into boots, or layered with other clothing, with ease.

There's a new display, too.

I still need to put out the sign that says that you can have any combination of thread and jean color you'd like for L$150; but if you're reading this and you want a combo that isn't out, feel free to IM me and ask for it.

A few weeks ago I bought a Mannequin to show the clothing on (so I wouldn't have to tak all those dreaded Vendor Shots.) But when I tried to put my clothes on it, I found to my dismay that although it looked great with the vendor's clothes on it, mine don't match up at all on the wrists or ankles, and there are problems with the sides of the legs, too.

Personally, I wouldn't buy something from a vendor who shows really mismatched seams on a mannequin, along with a note that says, "Seams match on the real thing, I promise." So I decided not to put it out. Sigh.

Instead, I've put up an Almost Free pair of Jeans that go along with the Almost Free Hawaiian shirt. They are very blue, and have lime green stitching. You can buy them for L$1, and try them out to see if the Jeans are something that you'd like to have.

All of this goodness is available now, from my store in Livingtree. Jeans are L$50 for a pair, L$250 for a Fat Pack with seven pairs. Modify/Copy/NO Transfer.

5 comments:

Anonymous
said...

In real life, these fascinations with clothes, presents, and trappings would seem...out of place...and shallow. What is different? The novelty? Technology? It all seems like playing Barbies to me, from the outside.

In some ways, SL™ is like real life. You have to put clothing on your avatar.

Like RL, the clothing worn in SL is an expression and statement, as well as simple protection. (You'd be banned, if you wandered around naked, so you really can't.)

A pair of jeans that costs about 18¢ is a way to express yourself. (Last I checked, the exchange rate was L$265 to $1 US, so L$50 is around $0.18.)

I make "normal" clothing, for people who want to look "normal." It's not as common as you might think, in SL.

Do you accuse people who make jeans in RL of being shallow? What is "out of place" about making clothing for people to wear?

What "place" do you imagine that I should inhabit?

Do you not realize that I'm making all these things because people in world have asked me to make them?

Is it like Barbies? For some people, yes. Yes it is. They are having fun and relaxing. Do you have a problem with that?

But it's also a chat room with hundreds of thousands of people in it, and thousands of Special Interest groups. If you want to talk to people who share your interest, no matter what it is, you can find them in SL.

It's a wonderful place to express your creativity. The tools you need to build in 3D are free, and you can build anything you can imagine.

It's a great medium to teach people about all kinds of things. Want your students to remember the planets? They can go on a virtual tour, and see them. Want to discuss the Sistine Chapel? It's in world. You can go there, and look at it, and see the effect of all the paintings together.

I could go on, but I won't.

Second Life, like Real Life, is what you make of it.

I'm sorry I'm not living up to your expectations. But I'm just a middle-aged woman, and I have fun doing this stuff. Plus, I get paid, so I don't have to find some other way to make my living. :D From my point of view, it doesn't get better than that.

Thank you for your response. I would like to elaborate my position.I first knew your name over 10 years ago as a tarot card designer. Beautiful cards with clean lines and pleasing tones drew me to purchase your set. The symbolism was effective for my use and I admired your style.I bought the tarot book a few years later and enjoyed the reasoning behind the work. I learned and laughed with that book and its lighthearted but not flippant tone.When I finally entered the computer age I discovered your website. Essays, opinions, art and information were fun to explore. I appreciated your balanced manner towards things for free and things to pay for.Next came the book on ethics, which I purchased as a birthday present for myself in 2005. I use that still and am slowly refining my actions and beliefs using the questions and self-examination.Do you see where I am heading? The trail seems to have gone cold, so to speak, from my POV. I do not condemn but posed the previous query with open heart. I cannot pretend to understand the fascination with SL, and choose to focus on RL. I appreciate your effort to clarify a bit.Your answer was adequate. You are enjoying it, getting paid, and giving a group of people what they want. Of course that could be said about many professions, hey hey.No slight meant, and thanks again. N.

So what you actually wanted to know was why I was spending so much time in a Virtual world, which looks shallow from the outside, instead of in the Real World?

That's a slightly different question, and has a different answer. :D

I first went to Second Life because a group of us who were playing Wild Divine (a bio-feedback "game" with a strong spiritual message) were looking for a platform that would allow us to use the bio-feedback device in a multi-player environment.

Co-operation seemed like the next logical step to us, and the game designers weren't going there, so we thought we would. :D

By the time that it was clear that wasn't going to work the way we had hoped, at least in a time-frame I could work with, I'd become involved with a Pagan group in-world, teaching things about Wicca.

At about the same time, I realized that Second Life was a wonderful opportunity for people to explore their creative potential.

People who had never tried to create anything since their childhoods were using the tools in SL, which are, literally, at everyone's fingertips to stretch their creative wings, and bring things in their mind's eye into being.

From my POV, this is one of the most valuable things that people can do, even if it is "just" in a virtual environment.

The problem was that, because they'd never done this before, many of them had no idea how to use the tools.

There was a self-paced in-world tutorial called "The Ivory Tower of Primitives" that taught people how to use the 3D building tools. But there was nothing to help them to apply textures to their creations.

So I built one, called the Texture Tutorial.

At the same time, I found myself doing quite a bit of counseling in-world. After all, SL isn't really a "game." There are no Non-Player Characters, no story, no levels or goals, no fighting, no world created by game designers.

It's just a platform, where people can meet, talk, interact, make the things they want to make, do the things they want to do, be whatever they want to be.

It is, very much, a consensual universe, just like the "real" one, but with different laws of physics. (We can fly and teleport, and create things out of thin air. But we can't move our arms and legs without animations. :D)

So all the people you meet are real people. Some of them are "role-playing," pretending to be things that they aren't in RL. But many are not.

And even those who are have RL problems that they need to talk about, on occasion.

Which means that I found myself doing a fair amount of counseling.

So I had a Wiccan Learning Center, a Texture Tutorial, and a private place where I could talk to people who needed counseling. (Which, in SL, means a "sky box", since there's no real hope of privacy anywhere else.)

But, in SL, you can't put things out and leave them there permanently unless you own land, which means you have to pay Tier to the Lindens.

Which meant that I needed to make it self-supporting.

So I started to sell the clothing, skins, and hair that I had made for myself, to support the work I was doing with people from all over the globe.

Gradually, that has grown until I'm earning about half my income from Second Life. (It's the largest portion of my gross, but it costs several hundred dollars a month to have the land I have.)

What you see in this blog is stuff that I'm selling, to support my "island" in SL.

As such, it's a very one-sided picture of what I'm doing there. Most of my island isn't stores, and most of the hundreds of people who visit in a week aren't buying things.

I've set it up to be a place that fosters tranquility and exploration, and it seems to be working that way.

During the years that I've been in Second Life, I've also had some major health issues, which vastly curtailed my RL work. For a long time, I simply could not physically handle the travel, processed food, or exposure to hundreds of different "bugs" that is part and parcel of going to Conventions.

I'm doing better now, and have been venturing out into the Real World more. :D

So, the short answer is that I had to cut back my RL activities for health reasons, but I'm doing the same things in SL that I've always done in RL since SL is just a different reality. What you see on this blog, though, is just the stuff that I'm selling to support the work I'm actually doing there, not the work I'm doing itself. :D